Worms, Roxanne! Worms!

[IrrationalSanity]

I think it is interesting how the various legends regarding the Worm of the World's End did or did not come to fruition.

Legend 1. There is a worm.
Check. Full stop.
Legend 2. The worm is powerful enough to bring the World to an End.
Check.

Spoiler

But that power doesn't necessarily mean that the world comes to an end.

Legend 3. The One Tree is some kind of outcropping of the Worm.
Maybe. We never get to see the Worm itself, to see whether the Tree is some kind of antler, or maybe some other protruding element. But there is implication.
Legend 4. The Earth is some kind of secretion from the Worm as it slept.
Does not appear to be the case, though not categorically denied. Seems more like a cyst the universe formed around it to protect itself from an irritant. Much like a Pearl or a plant gall.
Legend 5. It likes to snack on stars, and by extension, Elohim.
Check. Sorta. Since we don't see it cavorting in the sky, I have to assume the legend has it backwards. It is clear that the worm has a sweet tooth for EarthPower in general. Elohim are effectively "Popcorn Earthpower", and so as the Worm finds and eats an Elohim, their corresponding star gets extinguished.

Spoiler

Until Jerry and Martiir get their way...

Legend 6. The Worm likes an after dinner snooze.
You Betcha!

Spoiler

With interesting ramifications.

Legend 7. Nicor are the offspring of the Worm.
Plausible. When envisioning the Worm as something that could secrete the rest of the world as a skin, something as small as a Nicor didn't seem reasonable. Now that we know the approximate size of the beast, the scale of Nicor doesn't seem so off.

Spoiler

Let's just hope they never develop their momma's sweet tooth!

[lurch]

HAA! That pretty good!...The Last Chrons becomes a " debunking" of the Worm of the World's End Myth..or..an Investigation of the Illusions of the Elohim. ..where TC and Linden Avery channel James Randi to expose all the flim flam and hokem in the way of being ones self.

[IrrationalSanity]

I wouldn't call it a debunking. More along the lines of MythBusters, finding the kernel of Truth at the base of all of the random hyperbole.

[Vraith]

Well, number 3 is basically shown false. The One Tree isn't physically part of the Worm seems to be shown by Brinn saying something like "the Tree is dying, cuz the Worm isn't feeding its roots." [[I suppose it might have sloughed the tree off...beasties shed antlers after all]]

We'll probably never know for sure, though...Worms are notoriously shy of portraits. I mean, dogs playing poker are common and cheap...but I have yet to see any pics, posters, or paintings of worms playing pinochle.

[wayfriend]

Legend 1. There is a worm.
Check. Full stop.

There's certainly something called the Worm. But is it actually a Worm?

Did anyone ever actually see it? Or did they only see the effects of it as it went about?

Now Covenant saw a shape within the hermetic mass of the storms, a dark form limned by the heavy rise and fall of the lightning. Infelice had described the Worm as no more than a range of hills in size. An earthquake might swallow it. But to him, it looked more like a chain of mountains breasting inexorably through the seas. Its power was staggering: he was barely able to keep his feet. Perhaps his appalled senses exaggerated the Worm’s physical bulk; but nothing could measure its sheer force. He was too human to look at it for more than a moment at a time.

AFAICT, that is as close to a description of the physical form of the Worm as we ever get. It's a bit vague.

[Savor Dam]

...I have yet to see any pics, posters, or paintings of worms playing pinochle.

I see what you did there. That one almost crawled past me...but I got it about three beats later than I should have. Well-played!

[lurch]

The Worm is in full view as it is slowed and stopped by the lurker..That only Branl is able to witness it and report back to TC doesn't necessarily mean we don't get to " see" it.. One might want to think about that . Why isn't it described straight out.? The author does the same thing with the consummation of TC and Linden's marriage. He describes its effects rather than it, itself. We get to kno it by its effects..the thud of its heaving, its lightning and gale force winds...and that it has lightning inside of it and casts aura and is big as a mountain range..So, it exists,,but ...its dark out and darkness of storm surrounds it...MYSTERY...The Worm intentionally remains pretty much a MYSTERY.. Try this on...The ultimate Mystery to a surrealist is the answer to the question,," Who Am I?"...so,,metaphorically, the Worm can be seen as...the reader..devouring every drop and dribble of the author's earth power in a relentless march, word by word, to the World's End..the end of the book, the end of the Last Chrons, the end of TCoTC.And Of Course All The Characters FEAR the Inevitable. ..the reader turning to the last page and finishing the last sentence. WE are the Worm...

..or maybe the author is just having fun with us...as in...It was a dark and stormy Worm.....

[wayfriend]

Well, Lurch, that's kind of where I am going. If the Worm is shrouded in mystery, it leaves open the possibility that it is not a literal worm, but a destructive force which people describe as a Worm, falling back on a myth/metaphor to provide a way to "see" it within their world view.

It may be "havoc incarnate" more than any kind of annelid or nematode.

There's a lot about the way it's described - fog, lightning, even local temporal instability - that I find it as much akin to a caesure as a Nicor.

The scene with the lurker forbidding the Worm does make it clear that the Worm might have a bit of grey matter. But I can see how some could claim that this doesn't prove that, that the forbidding was like turning a storm aside.

[lurch]

In my dissect of chapter 1 of Part 2,,where we meet the Worm a 2nd time, I put forth a challenge to substitute the word " Worm" with .." the Reader" in every mention.
It works. I get the same sensation that I did when I read Herbert's finale,,Chapter House. He liberates his characters and in away so does Donaldson in TLD,,but..Donaldson goes one step further,,in a way, he also liberates the reader..Its over, the Worm, the reader, is put back to a restful sleep...and they sleep happily ever after.

[wayfriend]

... "unsatisfied reader" may work even better.

[lurch]

Joy is in the stomach of the Worm that consumes the Earth Power.

[peter]

There is a precedent; Didn't they used to harvest the worms crap or something in 'Dune' to make their eyes go purple.

[Vraith]

There is a precedent; Didn't they used to harvest the worms crap or something in 'Dune' to make their eyes go purple.

Well, kinda...not exactly Worm crap [more like oxidized puree of larval worm corpses], and blue on blue eyes, but close enough for government work.

[IrrationalSanity]

I always figured it was more like shed skin than corpses. The Water of Life, on the other hand, required you to drown a baby worm and harvest its last puke...

[peter]

Seems reasonable to me....... Your Water of Life ain't never gonna come cheap is it?

[Zarathustra]

One thing we know for sure is that the Worm is a corporeal entity, simply from the fact that it can drink Earthblood.

From the GI:

Also, why did Lord Foul never use the Power of Command to wake the Worm?


... since he's incorporeal, drinking the EarthBlood would be a difficult feat.(12/05/2007)

If the Worm were incorporeal, i.e. didn't have a physical body, the fact that it needs food (not to mention rest) wouldn't make much sense.

Its physical body is described as a chain of mountains poking out of the water. What other corporeal, physical, food-eating thing would look like this aside from a giant worm-like creature? Combine this with the fact that the nicor are its off-spring, and they are giant worm-like creatures, and it seems conclusive that this is a literal, physical, worm.

As for the Worm symbolizing readers, well, Donaldson has already explained the symbolic meaning of this creature. It's the Land's world's "seeds of its own destruction." It's death, entropy.

Not really much of mystery, after all.

[Vraith]

Seems reasonable to me....... Your Water of Life ain't never gonna come cheap is it?

Correct, Sir. Water of Life ain't cheap [and when it is it ain't easy to swallow].

However, spice contains exploded larval worms...they're the shell of the bomb that results in a spice blow. [easier to swallow than the mezcal worm...less disgusting when it's all mushed up and dissolved].

Back on topic, though:
Yea, the Worm is surely corporeal and end-of-world literally [symbolically entropy/death, too] per Z above.

Number 4 of OP: the world COULD still be a secretion of sleeping Worm: a condensate of its waste-products from eating all those stars...that would require that more than just the one world was within the Arch when the Creator created, and probably a long span of time/evolution for world to form. Or that the Creator found a sleeping encrusted Worm floating around in the Timeless Zone and threw the Arch up around it.

[peter]

This is going to sound silly, but can something symbolise something actually within the story in which it is written. I can get that 'Animal farm is a metaphor for communism and the pigs symbolise the communist leadreship of the USSR' but the Worm? Can it actually bot exist within the Land and symbolise the seeds of the Lands own destruction sown within itself, simultaneously? How does this work?

[Vraith]

This is going to sound silly, but can something symbolise something actually within the story in which it is written. I can get that 'Animal farm is a metaphor for communism and the pigs symbolise the communist leadreship of the USSR' but the Worm? Can it actually bot exist within the Land and symbolise the seeds of the Lands own destruction sown within itself, simultaneously? How does this work?

Why not? Fire is literal and burning in our world, but we use it to symbolize lots of things...some literal and burning, some conceptual or analogical, etc.
Hell, almost every thought we HAVE is using something real/literal to stand for something else.
Explicitly in this case: sure it is the LITERAL cause/seed...but it also symbolized the conceptual/structural [and also metaphysical] reality/need for endings. The Worm is what it is, physically, in that world...but also represents/reflects the existence/necessity of endings in any and all other creations.

[Dondarion]

It's interesting to me how the Worm, while apparently a physical being, is not a rational being, capable of thinking. Kinda like the skurj, it just does what it was created to do, consume the galaxy it was spawned from.   The skurj could only  tunnel (like a worm) and feed and replicate, period.  The Worm was made to consume Earthpower, period.    The Land's Universe was spun out of the Worm (or Worms?), and it will be unspun by it...at some point (the "seeds of its own destruction").    To me, it is symbolic in that despite, if left unchecked, can bring about catastrophic consequences.  TC and others learn this in the LCs.  A reorientation of the Land (and oneself) is required, which will unlock new potential and possibility, and thus turn the Worm around and get it back in its bottle.  But it must be ever diligently guarded and warded,  lest the Land's people slip again. Because it will fulfill its destiny, and no logic or reasoning with it will  prevent that.